The Hindu Business Line : Shriram EPC aims for major play in coal gas plants

Chennai, May 18 Armed with a technology tie-up with Envirotherm GmbH of Germany, Chennai-based Shriram EPC Ltd aims for a major play in the area of coal gasification. The company begins its innings with a Rs 35-crore order from Jindal Steel.

Jindal Steel is putting up a Rs 1,000-crore pellet plant at Barbil, Orissa, and the coal gas plant is a part of the project. Shriram EPC is to provide the entire engineering services as well as the gasifier for unit. The gasifier will burn 43 tonnes of coal an hour to produce 1,000 cubic metres of coal gas, Mr T. Shivaraman, Managing Director, Shriram EPC, told Business Line recently.

Shriram EPC expects that with the Jindal plant as a reference, and with the technology tie-up with Envirotherm (which, incidentally, got the technology from Lurgi), there will be more orders coming its way. The company is looking at orders in the coal belt in eastern India, especially in Jharkhand, Mr Shivaraman said.

Generating electricity

Coal gas is methane produced by burning coal under controlled conditions. A coal gas plant is similar to the more popular IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle), a technology for producing gas from coal. There are a few differences, essentially in terms of calorific values.

The output of an IGCC plant is used to drive turbines to generate electricity. The product that comes out of a Shriram EPC-Envirotherm plant will not be suitable to produce electricity, but can replace industrial LPG or furnace oil.

A coal gas plant at a coal mine can produce methane at $4 a million British Thermal Units, while commercial LPG will cost around $12 a million BTU.

Any industry near a coal source that uses LPG or furnace oil to produce heat can profitably switch over to coal gas — this is basically Shriram EPC’s pitch to its potential customers.

Mr Shivaraman believes that India, like China, will go the coal gas way in the coming years, mainly because of the need to use the huge cache of coal under its soil in a manner that is environment-friendly. Also, unlike in earlier years, ash disposal is no longer a problem. Ash, today, is a valuable commodity that goes into the manufacture of cement and for road under-bedding.

Comfortable order book

Apart from undertaking ‘engineering, procurement and construction’ jobs for building power, steel, coke, water and pipeline units, Shriram EPC is positioning itself as an emerging green power major. The company has its own renewable power portfolio through its subsidiary, Orient Green Power Ltd, and also puts up green power projects for other companies.

In all, the company has orders worth Rs 1,800 crore on hand, executable over this year and the next. The company ended 2007-08 with a turnover of Rs 650 crore; its turnover in the first nine months of 2008-09 was Rs 560 crore.

Net profit for the nine-month period was Rs 24 crore, compared with Rs 35 crore for the whole of the previous year. Now, partly with an objective of getting tax benefits, Shriram EPC is putting up a wind farm consisting of 8 windmills of a total capacity of 12 MW. The wind turbines are manufactured within the group — in the new Gummidipoondi plant of Leitner Shriram, a joint venture of Shriram EPC and Leitner Technologies of Italy.

Shriram EPC already has 3 MW of installed wind power capacity. Another 85 MW of wind power capacity is owned by its subsidiary Orient Green Power Ltd.

Related Stories:
Shriram EPC sees big revenues from renewable energy sector in 2 years

More Stories on : Power | Outlook | Coal

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page